After I survived a serious mental health crisis, I discovered something about myself that surprised me.
I wanted people.
I wanted someone sitting beside me. I wanted company. I wanted to know that I wasn't alone. And, probably strangest of all for anyone who knows me, I wanted hugs.
I was never really a hug person before. I resisted them. Now there were days when being held by someone I loved felt like exactly what I needed.
The problem was that almost as soon as I wanted those things, another part of my mind started telling me I shouldn't ask for them.
You're being needy.
You're bothering them.
They're going to get tired of you.
Eventually, they're going to leave.
So I found myself in a strange contradiction. I needed connection more than I had in a very long time, while simultaneously being terrified that needing connection would cost me the people I loved.
There were times I would type a message and delete it.
Sometimes I wanted to ask a friend if I could come over or if they wanted to spend time together, but I would hesitate because I was already preparing myself for them to say no.
And a no didn't always feel like a normal no.
Logically, I knew people had lives.
My friends have jobs. They have families. They have children. They get tired. They make plans. Sometimes they simply don't feel like doing anything.
I know all of this.
But after my crisis, my emotional brain became very good at taking completely ordinary things and turning them into evidence of something much bigger.
A friend couldn't hang out?
They're getting tired of you.
Someone took longer than usual to answer?
You're bothering them.
Plans changed?
They don't actually want you there.
It didn't matter that there was evidence telling me the opposite.
These were people who had been in my life for years. They checked on me. They answered my calls. They invited me places. They sat with me. They hugged me.
There was real evidence in front of me that I was loved.
And somehow my mind could still find a way to question it.
That might be one of the strangest things about struggling with your mental health. Sometimes you can know something without being able to feel it.
I could know that someone loved me and still be afraid they were going to leave.
I could spend time with a friend one day, laugh and feel completely comfortable, and then wake up the next morning wondering whether I had been too much.
Did I talk about how I was feeling too much?
Did I stay too long?
Should I have given them more space?
Maybe I shouldn't message today.
Maybe I should wait for them to message me.
My mind could turn friendship into something I constantly felt I needed to check.
And underneath all of it was one fear:
What if eventually everyone gets tired of me?
The frustrating part is that I knew how irrational some of this was.
I have people in my life who have known me for years. Some of these relationships have survived different versions of me, different stages of life, disagreements, distance, good years and terrible ones.
Yet anxiety doesn't always care about history.
It wants reassurance right now.
That created another problem.
Because the more reassurance I wanted, the more afraid I became of asking for it.
I didn't want the people I loved to feel responsible for keeping me okay.
That is something I have had to think about a lot since my crisis.
There is a difference between needing people and making people responsible for you.
My friends are allowed to be busy.
They are allowed to say no.
They are allowed to have days when they don't have the emotional capacity for a heavy conversation.
My parents are allowed to have their own emotions.
The people who love me cannot always be available exactly when my mind decides I need reassurance.
They are my family and friends.
They are not my therapists.
Learning that has not meant deciding I should stop reaching out.
If anything, I am learning the opposite.
I can ask.
I can say, "I'm having a hard day."
I can ask someone if they want to go for a walk.
I can ask for company.
I can even ask for a hug.
And the other person is allowed to say they can't right now.
The hard part for me is learning not to turn that answer into a story about what I mean to them.
"I'm busy" doesn't mean "I don't love you."
"I can't today" doesn't mean "I never want to see you."
A message that hasn't been answered yet is just a message that hasn't been answered yet.
Those statements sound incredibly simple when I write them down.
Living them is harder.
I'm also learning that support doesn't always have to look dramatic.
Sometimes support is a conversation.
Sometimes it's someone checking in.
Sometimes it's sitting next to somebody and watching a movie.
Sometimes it's going for a walk.
And sometimes it really is just a hug.
I spent a lot of my life resisting hugs. Now I understand why people talk about them the way they do.
On a difficult day, there is something incredibly grounding about another human being holding you for a moment.
Nobody is solving anything.
There isn't necessarily advice.
The problem hasn't disappeared.
But for a few seconds, you are reminded that you're here and somebody else is here with you.
I've needed that reminder lately.
I'm still learning how to need people without being ashamed of needing them.
I'm learning that independence doesn't mean never asking for comfort.
I'm learning that loving someone doesn't mean they have to be available to me every moment.
I'm learning that someone can disappoint me and still love me.
I'm learning that I can feel afraid of being abandoned without treating that fear as proof that abandonment is actually happening.
And I'm learning that I have a role in this too.
I have to continue taking care of my mental health. I have to use the support available to me. I have to learn how to sit with uncomfortable feelings instead of immediately needing someone else to make them disappear.
None of that means I have to do everything alone.
Maybe that's the balance I'm trying to find now.
I don't want to make the people I love responsible for saving me.
But I also don't want fear of being "too much" to convince me that I should disappear whenever I'm struggling.
There has to be space between those two things.
I'm still figuring out what that space looks like.
For now, sometimes it looks like sending the message instead of deleting it.
Sometimes it looks like accepting that the answer might be no.
Sometimes it looks like reminding myself of all the years of evidence I have when my mind tries to convince me that one unanswered message means everyone is leaving.
And sometimes it looks like allowing myself to ask someone I love for a hug.
Then actually believing, at least for that moment, that I'm allowed to need one.
